The French Canadian village of
Bonaventure seemed to have strayed away from its companions and lost itself
in the interminable wilderness that lies between the settlements of the
Eastern States and the St. Lawrence country. For many years the community
was self-centred and the nearest market-town
too far away to be of consequence. A visionary seigneur,
an aerial, castle-building Frenchman who never took the trouble to leave
his own château except to taste the joys of Paris, had sent out a
colony to this new possession, but it dwindled away and did not flourish.
The
factor was proved a cheat at last, and the old count shrugged his shoulders,
smiled, and resigned himself. Some of the disappointed settlers retraced
the trail to the great river, but a few remained; they had their gardens
and their pigs and chickens. Life might be far worse elsewhere.

The lumber men came by and by
with their long axes; the old seigneur's timber made rich other
men than his heirs, while Bonaventure flourished for a season with new
prosperity. The rough road over which the great logs were hauled to a distant
stream proved a permanent thoroughfare, and now and then a stranger came
and stayed. The mother-church sent a pastor to teach and pray among these
neglected children, and a sharp spire, in glistening armor of tin, rose
above the later growth of spruces and maples that had hastened to conceal
the great stumps of the vanished pines. The first log huts were one by
one replaced by the high-roofed houses of regulation
shape and size which one may see in Beauport, in Lorette,
in a hundred other villages of the French régime. This was a
small town, this Bonaventure, but it valued itself even more than was necessary
in later years. The hereditary owners of the petty estates were apt to
look with suspicion upon any new-comers, and when it was ascertained that
a man called Joseph Pochette from the neighborhood of Quebec had bought
the Rispé house and land, with a piece of outlying forest, there
was a bitter arraignment of such proceedings. Mère Poulette, who
kept the village shop in her front room, was particularly angry, though
one would have believed her ready to welcome a new customer. "Some crime
has forced him to abandon his birthplace," she exclaimed, and glared round
upon the startled company.

But Joseph himself, a good fellow
enough, quickly pacified the neighborhood, especially as he died of fever
within a year or two after his appearance in Bonaventure society. His funeral
was a satisfactory one, but Mère Pochette had already drawn down
upon herself the dislike of her associates. She was wickedly proud and
independent, a black-hearted schemer who cared only to grow rich; and when
she went by the houses with her fatherless baby in her arms, she won no
compassion, for she asked none, and all hearts were on the defensive. Even
the fact that old Poulette had not succeeded in making a good bargain with
widow Manon for her woodland was not lost sight of, for had not this stranger
the soul of an aristocrat under her peasant's clothes.

At last there was another change
at Bonaventure; one day the surveyors came with their chains and compasses,
and before anybody could take time to fairly consider such an innovation
the new railroad was pushing its way northward through the swamps and forests.
Now the piece of worthless waste which Manon would not sell to Poulette
-- the obstinate woman! -- was sold to the company at an excellent price.
It was all a piece of luck, but the indignant chorus of the little shop
could not forgive such an outrage. As time went
on, however, Providence seemed to repay her for
her behavior. Her only child made an unfortunate match with a foreigner,
though it was well known that Mère Pochette meant to buy the chit
a rich husband. Then she was presently burdened with an orphan grandchild
and the chorus chattered and sing-songed their satisfaction. It took a
stalwart character to keep its own way with almost an aspect of serenity;
there was no light task in facing the dislike and distrust of one's townspeople,
though as Mère Pochette grew richer and, if the truth must be told,
prouder and more powerful year by year, her neighbors were civil enough
to her face and even obsequious, the worst of them, whatever they might
have said in winter evenings behind her back. She had devoted all her energies
to securing a generous dowry for her daughter. The mistaken girl had disregarded
this provision, had thwarted her mother's wishes, and had suffered enough,
God knows! Now Mère Pochette's object in life was the wise ordering
of the little granddaughter, and when, by and by, she was enviably settled
in life, the sneering by-standers might say what they chose. This noble
worldly ambition made Mère Pochette glad to work early and late
and to toil and save. She would put her grandchild where all the village
might not touch her. A career of pride and happiness should be put into
little Manon's future.

The neighbors were apt to look
suspiciously at little Manon, the granddaughter, as she went by their houses
with quick, light footsteps. She was of mixed race at any rate. Her father
was a young engineer from
the States who had married
this old Manon Pochette's handsome daughter, and they had held their heads
too high, the fools! and shaken the dust of the little village off
their feet. It was the way of the world; one April day their ribbons
were flying, and they laughed aloud together and never cared to cast a
look behind them at old friends; the next spring a letter came, and the
priest read it to the widow, that her daughter Jeanne was dead. Presently
the young engineer, broken and spent by chills and fever and hard fortune,
came creeping back with a cough and a white scared face and an ailing motherless
baby to the high-roofed cottage. Old Manon blessed herself, and waved her
thrifty hands in dismay. She rolled her eyes and made grimaces, and became
eloquent in patois sentences which her son-in-law did not even try to translate
for himself. Then she mounted to her garret and came down presently with
the dusty cradle. The wailing child was fumbled and tumbled and smothered
in coverings that seemed to have been waiting for it, and the waning fire
in the high, square stove was rekindled, though the May sun shone in benignantly.
The young man coughed less often for a blissful hour; he sank into an angular
chair at the chimney corner, and hid his face in his hands and cried silently.

The little house had seemed as
full of romance as a scene at a play, the year before; he had not concerned
himself with the rest of the habitants of Bonaventure; they were
only the tawdry stage crowd that weeps and exclaims in perfunctory unison
while the hero and heroine suffer real pains and know true joys just behind
the footlights. Now the sentiment and the amusement had faded out entirely.
The garden of his life had suddenly been blackened by the most chilling
of frosts; it was late spring here in old Manon's plain house, she was
a stout, unsympathetic old French Canadian; and as he had come from the
railway station tired to death with his long journey and finding even the
baby a heavy burden, he had not been blind or deaf to the unspoken jeers
and curious glances which were ready for him at almost every house. He
had once been a hero in his petty fashion; the men of the village had been
obliged to obey him for a short three months; he had disdained the women,
all except the pretty creature who had become his wife. Whether he had
regretted his marriage nobody would ever know. It was a dangerous experiment
to carry her among young girls whose training and schooling had been of
a better sort, but now there was nothing sweeter or sadder to think of
than the days when they had been deep in love. Poor Jeanne! her grave was
left alone in an unsheltered western burying-ground. He could not see even
that low sandy mound again, and now that he had in despair begged and borrowed
his way hither to bring little Manon to her grandmother, he felt that the
great mystery of death would soon be made plain to him. The few men who
remembered him on this new railroad had been very kind, and for a few hours
his reinstatement to a semblance of his former position and relationship
had brought back something of his old good comradeship and vigor. He even
criticized the finish of the work which had been done since he went away,
and discussed it with an acquaintance who was now an official of the company
and journeying prosperously to the terminus at Quebec. A kind-hearted woman
had helped him to take care of the baby; he had seen her eyes fill with
tears at his bungling attempt to undress it the night before, but he could
not cry himself. He had sometimes looked at the little trimming of the
baby's dress for a half hour at a time, he remembered so well the tune
his wife had sung as she sewed it on, and held and shaped it with her fingers,
months ago. It seemed like years already, though the baby's short life
almost linked that time to this.

. . . . . . . . .

The fire crackled in the box-stove,
the little child was sound asleep in the great cradle; old Manon, the grandmother,
stepped heavily to and fro, and now and then put a bowl or a plate on the
kitchen-table. She muttered something about her poor little one, and clasped
her hands ostentatiously, and seemed to consider the question of prayer,
but gave a savage glance at the poor son-in-law instead, and went on her
slow rounds about the room. He noticed that she looked ten years older
than she had the year before, but it hardly surprised him, all the rest
of the world was so changed, and then he looked wistfully at the plump
bed in the corner, and longed to lie there and forget his weariness in
sleep. He and Jeanne had run away to be married; her mother would not hear
to the match, because this would-be son-in-law was not a Catholic. When
he looked up at the mantel shelf, however, his own letter that told the
stern mistress of the house of her daughter's death was displayed beside
the brass candlestick and the little picture
of St. Joseph which had been blessed by the archbishop.
After all, was it not something to have a literate son-in-law?

In the next house and the house
beyond, the neighbors were talking, and watching by turns the door which
the traveler had lately entered. "It is well that Manon Pochette has made
the round of the blessed stations of the cross
every morning these many years," said the fierce dame who sat in her little
shop across the way. "The saints warned her, she will be poor indeed and
incapable, without their help, to bring up an infant of no gifts; a perfectly
deplorable occasion, my friends," and she looked from one to another, while
a doleful neighbor closed her eyes and groaned loudly. It was a great while
since anything so interesting had happened in Bonaventure.

"He has been robbed of his haughty
behavior," continued the first speaker. "A wicked pride indeed, but an
abased manner of return to an insulted house. He will not toss pennies
now to good Justin Poulette, who has indeed a safe subsistence, but spends
nothing for fine clothes" --

"She threw them at his face,"
said doleful old Marie Binet sharply. "She had reason. If he treated Jeanne
wickedly he now has his reward. She had an amiable appearance, but Mère
Pochette clothed her like a doll, and the devil tempted her. She had not
the look of a child whom one may believe either good or beautiful," and
Marie Binet gazed at her acquaintances for confirmation. This was venturing
too far. Marie was known to the initiated to be a thief and a liar, and
she feigned not to notice a smile of derision while she took her basket
of potatoes and went her way. She had her revenge; at the moment she closed
the inhospitable door, and began to mutter a refreshing imprecation, Manon
Pochette beckoned and called her eagerly from across the way. The audience
within the little shop watched her from the window with envious eyes. Manon
Pochette was one who kept her own secrets, she never had been one of the
chosen company of gossips.

But this must be a dire emergency,
for presently Marie reappeared without her basket. Somebody must go for
Father David; the son-in-law had a few moments before slipped from his
chair and become a dead weight of insensibility upon the floor; they had
borne him to the bed; who could tell whether he might not be dead already?

"Marche! marche!" said
Marie importantly, stamping her foot and raising her voice as if her betters
were nothing but dilatory horses, and while some one hurried away to find
his reverence, the rest followed her over to the Pochette kitchen.

In a few hours more the excitement
was over and night had fallen. The young man's face was peaked and white,
and his body was lying at its slender length, thin and forsaken of the
poor warmth that life had lately kept. Manon was sitting by his side, rocking
to and fro and keeping watch by herself. She had lighted some sacred candles
which she had long been hoarding, and they were burning at the sleeper's
head in the brass candlesticks. The priest had come in time, thank God!
the despised son-in-law had opened his eyes and looked around bewildered
for a moment. He had assented to, and even welcomed the offices of the
church; they must have been to him a last and only provision against the
evils that might be waiting for him and his. The baby was christened too;
the father had already whispered, with an appealing look, that she was
named Manon. Late in the night a waning moon rose solemnly above the level
line of the horizon, and looked long at the few white-washed houses with
their high roofs. She shone into the eastern windows all along the row.
The whole flat country was lying in shadow; this faded moon at last looked
into one window that was apart from the rest, as if she had an errand there.
Manon was old and tired, she would have no watchers, but she had ceased
her prayers and fallen asleep, and the dead man's face wore a look of ineffable
peace. The candles were almost burnt out, the poor baby cried sometimes
in a faint unexpectant way, and the moon hid herself under the edge of
a great cloud.

II.

Out of this nourishing of sorrow
and misfortune, like a plant that blooms best in a hard cold soil, grew
little Manon. Her childhood was not a pleasant one in its surroundings,
indeed a less vigorous nature would have been stunted by the narrow life
and lack of sympathy. Bonaventure was a selfish parish in spite of the
lovely influence of the old priest, Father David, who, worn out with his
service to a stolid flock, at length lay down his terrestrial body to rest
in the tawdry burying-ground, while his spiritual body went away to its
own inheritance. The new priest had come to the parish half unwittingly;
it was a poor cure, and his house and church were plain and uninviting.
They could give him no pedestal of worldly pride and power. The new part
of the village grew steadily; over at the other side of the railroad there
were repair shops and supplies of wood for the trains, and in that quarter
Bonaventure expanded itself. The new parishioners were a somewhat lawless
set and distinct from the old residents; the little priest was not man
enough to control them or to lift them up in the arms of his faith. He
moved about among them conscious of the dignity of the church, bland and
double, but an inoffensive creature in the main, who wished things were
better, but also wished other people to take the trouble of making them
so.

Manon Pochette's house was still
the last one at that end of the row; she owned a good bit of land just
beyond it, and if you crossed that you came to a swamp; the house itself
stood a good deal higher, and overlooked the wide country that stretched
away to the westward. Behind it was all the eastern country, and from the
low ridge there was also a grand view of the railroad that carried idle
people to and fro on the face of the earth.

To Manon Pochette's mind the
railroad was quite unnecessary except for carrying her wares and her neighbors
to the market-town [twon]. As for the passengers, they always seemed the
same persons who went to and fro in the hurrying trains, for some foolish
reason. She never went into a car herself, the saints defend it, no! She
had duties in life, and a vocation, with a piece of land far too large
for an old woman to till, and beside, there was the grandchild, who grew
like a young fowl, with an unforeseen and impossible appetite into the
bargain. The mother, Jeanne, had been no care at all; she had seemed to
take care of herself entirely when one compared her with this one, who
was a terrible child of desires and eagernesses. All Mère Manon's
grievances against the young people had vanished long ago; it was fate
that had been hard upon her, not they, and the good Lord had taken them
to himself, poor children! Old Manon had said many a prayer for them in
the bleak church of a winter morning, and had appeased her conscience by
the number of masses she had caused Father David and Father Pierre to say
for the good of such innocent souls. Yet occasionally, as she leaned on
the heavy hoe to take a minute's rest as she worked among her cabbages,
the
old Adam in her nature got the better of such pious views of her affliction,
and she grumbled to herself about that foolish infant, that ungrateful
child, her daughter, or that worthless beggarly heretic, her son-in-law.
But she kept their black wooden crosses in good order in the church-yard,
and their memories came to her like pale ghosts beside the actual presence
and constant demands of her young granddaughter.

III.

Little Manon was made up of puzzles
and contradictions; the old peasant woman was more and more distressed
and gratified by them day by day. She was glad to have the neighbors see
that her grandchild was better than theirs -- in fact she had always maintained
a social advantage in Bonaventure corresponding to her residence on the
highest point of the ridge. She overlooked Julie Partout and Marie Binet
and Mère Poulette disdainfully in more ways than one, but she was
exasperated all the same by little Manon's vagaries and differences from
her own standard.

The child was devoted to church-going
-- she cried when she was very young to go with her grandmother to mass,
and her eyes grew large and her face grew grave, when she sat or knelt
before the altar and looked at its poor decorations of candles and gilding
and the votive offerings of faded artificial flowers and tinsel work that
were arranged upon a smaller altar at the side. Poor child, it was not
because she was satisfied with this cheap splendor, but rather that she
caught the hint it gave of better glories, that she liked to be in church.
She gave it no thought, as a bird sings in a cage and praises the bit of
sunshine at the garret window, when it has never in all its life spread
wings to the current of a great wind or gone swiftly through the bright
noonday air to a woodland nest. The grandmother, who knew the human nature
of the transplanted Frenchmen and women of her limited Canadian existence;
who could tell at once the value of a sheep or even a horse, and the weight
of a pig; who was shrewd at gardening and clever at housekeeping; who knew
when she was lied to, or when her dearest friend cheated her at a bargain;
old Manon, who was never stingy to the priest, or behindhand at her devotions,
who thought herself entirely acquainted with things of this world and sure
of a respectably high seat in heaven beside, -- this same old Manon was
baffled at last and confessed herself unable to understand her granddaughter.
The only thing to be said was that Manon the less was made of different
stuff.

Sometimes it seemed to the priest,
who knew the story of the child's parentage only through the medium of
the romancing villagers, that the vigor of the young father and mother
had been transferred to little Manon -- that their lives had been checked
and blasted to enrich this one descendant. He was given to sentimentalizing
a little, was Father Pierre, the parish priest, and he felt a great lack
of excitement of the best sort in Bonaventure. Sometimes he told himself
that he would see to it that little Manon had some schooling. She should
go to the school of the Sacred Heart; she might surely have a year or two
first with the good gray nuns; she must not be left to her own devices
in this hole of a place. Nobody seemed to know much of the child's father.
He had told old Mère Pochette that he had neither brothers nor sisters,
but Father Pierre soon discovered that the good woman did not like to be
questioned about her son-in-law. She had felt a certain contempt for him
because he came from the States; besides, it was indeed a monstrous cowardice
that he should have died so miserably and so young, and have made neither
place nor fortune for himself in the world. "They should have waited for
my consent," old Manon assured herself. "I could not properly hold out
always against them if he had been a good man. He was a perfectly stupid
pig not to make sure of the wardrobe and dowry he might have been certain
I would give to Jeanne. What was my wealth for if not for my one daughter?"
she would scold sadly, pulling hard and fast at the weeds; but now it would
not be long before young Manon, the little aggravation, would be finding
herself a man. But if all the powers of heaven would kindly aid, Manon
at least should have a respectable wedding before the high altar, and should
drive with her husband and the wedding party as far across the country
as the season would allow. Old Manon was herself reared in Quebec, and
her hard brown face grew rosy and tender for one moment as she thought
of the train of calèches
that followed her on her wedding-day. The tall ungainly vehicles; the shouts
of the guests; the red-coated soldiers who stopped in the narrow streets
to see them pass; the miles of houses and the tall poplars of the Beauport
road, -- the thought of it came back with a greater glory year by year.
"He was a good man to me from that day," said the widow to herself; "he
might have done better than to bring me to this rat-hole and leave me here;
but it was a good bit of land and of an enormous cheapness, and he knew
that well. If the Lord had pleased to let us remain together, and work
in the same world and watch each other grow old, like the rest of the neighbors!
It was best so if he must have one of us; a woman can work on the land,
but a man is a simpleton in his house. Joseph and Mary aid me with these
innocent cabbages that they may hold up their heads; the Lord send us rain,
for my poor bones will fail me to bring water to the crops a day longer,"
and Manon stopped to carefully bless herself as she knelt at her work.
Little Manon was of no great use in the garden, and she was frequently
berated because she had not been a grandson instead of a granddaughter.
She was apt not to be very efficient in the house, but it was not for lack
of power or of discretion. She was idle and straying, and liked the fresh
air and the sunshine. She was fond of visiting the priest's housekeeper
of an afternoon, and sometimes Father Pierre himself beckoned her into
his own parlor, and gave her lumps of sugar or well-dried figs from the
drawer of his writing-table. She had her mother's beauty and her father's
persuasive ways, but when she was in pain or her grandmother scolded her,
little Manon grew pale and pinched, and looked as her father did that night
he came back defeated and dying to Bonaventure. Old Manon was always particularly
aggrieved when she caught this painful, surprising likeness, and began
to talk about her own sorrows in a wailing petulant tone that sent the
young girl from the house to seek elsewhere for comfort.

IV.

In this village, where the days
dragged so slowly, the years had a way of vanishing unaccountably. Old
Manon had never succeeded in getting her establishment quite to rights
again, after the intrusion of the young engineer and his baby. She had
made up her mind that certain changes and arrangements would be necessary,
and she was an uncommonly executive person, as everybody knew. Suddenly
one became aware that little Manon was grown up, and that there was danger
of a lover. She was not old enough nor wise enough to think of such things,
but elderly people always say that of girls, as if they themselves had
waited for their husbands until the year before. Manon was unexpected in
her choice; her grandmother was so conscious of her kinship to an unknown
mass of strange, rich, willful, clever, and vagrant foreigners who belonged
to the States, that she had vaguely looked forward to the appearance of
a hero who should claim Manon's idle hand; a man, however, who had wealth
and power, and who would be a son-in-law, indeed! But one spring night
the silly girl had come sauntering home later than usual, laughing softly
and chattering like a swallow with young Charles Pictou, of whom no one
could say anything good. A terror to the schoolmistress, a rebel at home
and abroad; a youth who liked nothing but leading his dog through the world,
or lounging about the railroad station to see the roaring engines and the
gaping strangers. Charles Pictou, indeed! and Manon's light-heartedness
was promptly quenched by a vigorous box of her pretty ears as soon as she
had entered the house. "Pick these beans, quickly," said the cross old
woman. "Am I to die of toil? You would starve like the beasts if I were
not here to earn the bread for your foolish mouth." And in that moment
a fierce championship arose in little Manon's heart for the lad whose whistle
could even then be heard distinctly, as if he were waiting outside, longing
to defend her in her distress.

That summer the crops were bad,
and all Canada was poor and complaining. The lumber-yards were deserted,
the rain spoiled the grain, the fishermen were in distress, and aid
was to be sent to them in the forlorn gulf villages.
Once in a while some enterprising family had gone to the States, and indefinite
rumors of their splendid prosperity had journeyed back along the straight
shining lines of the railroad; but soon it became a common event, and the
old women knitted in their doorways, and saw the younger neighbors go proudly
away to seek their fortunes. The elder Manon was more contemptuous. "It
is all one, here or there," she said to the priest's housekeeper; "the
good-for-nothing expect to find a country where larks go to the oven and
cook themselves, and apples fall sugared from the trees." She surveyed
the paltry possessions of the emigrants with pity, and wished their owners
good luck with compassion. "I am one who remains behind," she said stiffly,
and shook her head until her flat black hat shuddered from a sense of its
insecurity.

The autumn shut down dark and
rainy; every few days some pale-faced sisters
of mercy or of charity, in their quaint out-of-date garb, went flitting
from house to house of the Bonaventure settlement, begging alms for the
love of Mary and of Jesus, for some sufferers or for the impoverished church.
The remote villages were in danger of famine. It was the worst harvest
ever known, and in spite of reports that work was hard to find in the States,
the trains were fuller than ever of emigrants. Bonaventure was tided over
any great distress, in common with most of the railway settlements, but
some of its inhabitants thought they were miserable because other people
were, and at best life was neither too rich nor too comfortable. In the
Western States there were whole farms given away; in the East there were
mills where even the children could earn great wages. The little place
was in a ferment, the quiet habitants
had never been so excited and restless. The old women croaked, they were
condemning some persons for going, and others for staying. Father Pierre
laid down his mass-books and tried to calm his people, but those who remembered
his predecessor spoke often of the benignant presence of Father David,
and openly reminded each other of his value to the parish. The fiery French
nature began to show itself unpleasantly, and households were divided against
themselves.

The gloomy weather continued,
the winter drew near. Little Manon and old Manon went their separate ways,
for the young girl was disobedient and would not listen to her grandmother's
objections and commands. She and Charles Pictou loved each other dearly,
and were only wondering how they could manage to marry. He also was an
orphan, and the aunt with whom he had lived was but a poor woman, and lately
had gone away with her five thin children to the States. Of late years
he had helped to support the household, for he earned a bit of money now
and then; but now he was growing older and he would work his fingers to
the bones for Manon if there were anything to do. He was full of hope,
he would have gone away afoot long ago if it had not been for Manon. The
grandmother had talked a great deal in these last days about sending her
to school at a nunnery in Quebec, and the young girl knew what it meant;
she knew, too, that while everybody else was poor there were loose bricks
in their chimney that covered shining money. Sometimes she wondered if
it would be wrong to steal some of it to give to Charles, so that he might
go away to make a home where they could live together. Father Pierre had
never liked young Pictou, the lad's shrewd eyes had seen more than was
necessary, and lately Charles had stayed away from mass. But as for the
housekeeper, she was on Manon's and her lover's side, and sometimes when
the priest sat with her grandmother, Manon slipped over to the great house
and took revenge in confiding her dear secrets to so kind a friend as old
Josephine. Josephine's little room was like a nun's with its bare boards
and its worn crucifix, and pictures of various suffering saints. The good
soul had once cherished a certainty that she had a vocation, and told Father
Pierre that she must join a sisterhood of great sanctity and benevolence,
but the priest had persuaded himself and her that she was wrong. He could
not imagine where he should supply her place; surely this also was a vocation,
and Josephine was a most careful cook. Life in Bonaventure must not become
any more difficult.

But in the face of disapproval
at home and distress abroad, the young people fairly flaunted their contentment
and happiness. They were sure that Charles would somehow get to the States,
and that he would soon become able to send for Manon or to come for her.
"The old tyrant is right," Charles said magnanimously. "She knows I should
be able to take care of you, and so I should indeed. But she might show
some confidence in me," and he stamped his foot and twirled the tassel
of his raveled red worsted belt.

V.

The sweet sad day came at length,
without note or warning. Josephine herself, after scores of prayers and
misgivings, had ventured to offer Charles a liberal assistance from her
slender savings, and he was off like a falcon, after a few hurried kisses
and promises to his sweetheart. He ran to the next station, five miles
away, to catch an express train which did not stop at Bonaventure, and
the girl with tearful eyes went down to the village, to the place where
the street crossed the track, to catch a last glimpse of her lover. She
wished that Charles had been able to say a prayer in the church, but she
would do that for him. Her woman's heart shrank from the strangeness and
dangers which he might meet, but she longed to go with him; she would have
braved sorrow and want if she could have gone with him to the States. It
seemed very lonely in the old cottage, when she returned; she passed her
grandmother, who sat in the doorway looking surly and dismal, without a
word. The sky was covered with low-lying gray and silver-white clouds,
the black spruce woods stretched away cold and thin to the level horizon.
It was almost winter weather, and she was alone and felt unsheltered in
that great flat landscape with its threadbare coat. She hoped that she
need not go down to the station again for a long time to come. She had
not seen Charles on the train, there was such a roar and dustiness as the
train rushed by and a crowd of young men; one of those with the red sashes
must have been Charles himself; had shouted adieu, or sung noisily. She
felt as if every one of them were laughing at her own secret, and hated
the strange faces that stared at her for one miserable moment before they
were swept out of sight. Charles was a thousand times more skillful than
the other lads of Bonaventure; he could surely make his way, but to what
temptations might he not yield, and only yesterday they had been together,
and separation had seemed almost impossible; at that hour the States had
seemed as remote as Heaven.

VI.

Now that Manon's heart had gone
away from Canada, she seemed more a foreigner than ever. All her thoughts
and hopes had gone to the States with her lover, and the short days seemed
long and dreary. In the house she tried to serve her grandmother well,
she hardly cared to go out-of-doors at all, and sat near the fire, sewing,
or picking beans with a far-away look in her eyes that made her companion
more and more angry. They had said nothing to each other about Charles
since their first fierce battles earlier in the year. The provincial life
was very dull at best. One has only to look at the transplanting of the
French peasants, childish, mercurial, and full of traditions and grievances,
from their ancient civilization to this untamed wilderness -- only to think
of their being carried by a sort of social inertia over the roughness of
their changed conditions, to understand the incongruities of Canadian life
in the remote settlements. By the time Manon
was grown there were few fêtes and but
little revelry and amusement of any description. The young men soon hardened
into stolid farmers, who discussed the politics of the province and scrutinized
the behavior of their English rulers with more or less inapprehension.
They grew stupid and heavy; they drank gin and bad beer; some of the wives
had a hard time of it, and one would hardly recognize their relationship
to the merry vine-growers and soldiers who had been their ancestors. Old
Manon Pochette preserved many of the old customs; she was more a French
peasant and less a Canadian than her neighbors, but young Manon, who had
been seeing life of late through a glamour and dazzle of happiness, sat
listlessly in the clean bare cottage, and wished herself away. There was
a colored print of a saint with a bleeding heart, which the grandmother
had bought from a peddler. Manon had hated it once with its woebegone look,
but now she looked to it often for sympathy and companionship. The brass
candlesticks still decorated the high shelf above the stove. The same angular
chairs and tables which thrifty Joseph Pochette had made himself stood
in order around the room.

The chief thing to be hoped for
was a letter, but none came from young Pictou; perhaps the noisy company
he had joined on the train had beguiled him, and he had already forgotten
Bonaventure. He had promised to send a letter to Josephine's care at the
priest's house, but presently she was found one day in tears and shook
her head dismally when Manon asked the often repeated question. The girl's
sharp eyes discovered that some enemy had guessed her simple plot, and
went away to pray, not for patience but for vengeance. Later, as she entered
the house, she found old Marie Binet warming herself by the stove. The
drifts were deep out-of-doors and the girl came in softly enough in her
great snow boots, but her grandmother feigned not to hear her. "He was
a good-for-nothing" she was grumbling; "he will never return, and at last
I have nothing to fear. I had already directed Father Pierre to advance
the price of a ticket from me, when that trembling fool Josephine forestalled
the plan."

Manon stood on the threshold
and the old women quailed at the sight of her angry eyes. "Come in from
the snow," growled the mistress of the house, "my old bones ache already,
and you will like to see me bent double."

"Another year," and she had quite
regained her self-possession, -- "another year
and I will go to the shrine of La Bonne Ste. Anne.
It will be a pretty tour for thee, too, Manon," she added in a softer tone,
but Manon's ears had become deaf. "Another year," she was saying to herself;
"I may be dead then, and if not, to go with a groaning procession of cripples!
God forbid!" and tears filled Manon's eyes, and even fell down upon the
well-scoured floor. "Where is my letter?" she said suddenly, and turned
fiercely upon her grandmother.

Old Manon was equal to so slight
an occasion. Father Pierre himself was deep in this intrigue, which gave
it a certain dignity and value. "Letter!" she repeated, "you never had
a letter in your life, and why should I covet it who cannot read even my
mass-book? Ungrateful, listen to me! Next year you shall go to Quebec
and see fine things; to Lorette church, and to the
chapel of the Seminary, where are blessed relics. That is all the world;
when one has seen Quebec, one knows everything. I have a little money saved
from my poor garden," she added amiably by way of explanation to old Marie,
who nodded sagely. "It is something to pray for -- Quebec!" Marie responded
devoutly, but the foolish girl would not listen, she was pressing her forehead
against the cold window-pane and staring out into the starlit night. What
fools she and Charles had been! Of course Father Pierre had taken the letter
from the post and given it to her grandmother. Old Manon fairly chuckled
with satisfaction, and went on chattering with her guest. After this startling
episode, they spoke a quaint dialect, clipping their thin words, and dwelling
lightly on the objectionable letters. Such language belonged to the lips
and not the heart, one would say who listened and did not understand.

Marie did not mean to stay any
longer than she could help; she was too anxious to give herself the pleasure
of reporting such a bit of news elsewhere. Some persons would take the
lovers' part, and there might be a fine discussion presently, in the little
shop across the way. Manon Pochette was in most things a shrewd woman;
one cannot tell why she chose to make a confidant of the least reliable
of her neighbors.

Manon the younger grew more and
more angry that night and longed more and more to find her hoped-for letter.
If she could only hold it in her hand, she believed that she could easily
wait for daylight and read it aloud then over and over, until she knew
it by heart. She lay in bed beside her grandmother with wide open eyes
until she heard the familiar long-drawn breaths that belonged to sound
sleep. Then she crept out softly, and went like a mouse about the room;
she felt in the capacious pocket, in a little box that was under a loose
board in the floor. Her heart beat fast as she unwound the long cord that
fastened it, but there was no letter anywhere. The old woman was growing
deaf lately, and could not have heard such gentle movements, but it seemed
a perilous enterprise, and proved to be a disappointing one. If Manon only
knew where to write to her lover, or if she only knew how to follow him,
it would be enough, but she cried herself to sleep that night and the next
night and the next. Before many weeks were spent, Father Pierre went away
suddenly and a stranger came to take his place.

VII.

The winter months passed by,
there was sickness in the village of Bonaventure, and everybody longed
for the spring. Manon had grown thin and pale; she could not eat, she would
not smile, her life was spoiled at its outset, and Josephine, who had meant
to be a friend to the young people, bewailed her indiscretion and wished
that she had tried to keep young Pictou at home. There was plenty of work
now at the station; they had even brought some young men from elsewhere,
and Charles might have been well established, if only he had gained a little
patience. "We that fight for ourselves make enemies of Heaven," she sighed,
and tried to make amends with prayers and piteous confessions of her sins.
As for the letters, they had long ago been read and laughed over and burnt
in the priest's room, and Father Pierre had given old Manon a generous
glass of wine. Josephine had seen it through the keyhole. She never told
little Manon of that; she would not lower the child's reverence for the
priest and for sacred things. Father Pierre had always hated Charles; alas
for that poor human nature that even his holy calling could not lift above
the earth and its weaknesses.

When Mère Pochette looked
at her young housemate, and in spite of herself could not help pitying
the dull eyes that had once been so bright, and the faded cheeks, she forgave
herself her share in the sad change; for was not she thinking always that
every day added something to her possessions, and that by and by she would
find a suitable young man, and would go frankly to him and announce the
magnitude of little Manon's dowry. All the lads gave shy glances at her,
the pretty simpleton! There must be thriving grandsons of her old Quebec
acquaintances by this time; she would fling her money east and west at
the wedding, and then work on among her vegetables until her time for departure
came. "All, yes, she shall have all," the old woman muttered once in a
while and blessed herself at the thought.

At last her plans began to take
definite shape, since it was plain something must be done. The neighbors
need not scowl at her, for was not she meaning to make the long-talked-of
journey to Quebec as soon as the first fine weather came, and her garden
was made and planted? That would pay Manon for all her fancied grievances,
and as the winter waned the glories of that expedition pictured themselves
brighter and brighter. Manon should find a rich husband there for a certainty,
of a description and with such amiable qualities. She herself would indeed
like to see the old city again and those of her friends who were left.
Manon would think no more of that foolish, handsome beggar lad who had
forgotten her after all; she had nothing else but him to think of in Bonaventure,
but in Quebec she would quickly console herself. "For what have I slaved
myself all these years?" the old woman would demand angrily of Marie. "I
have a right to forbid her marriage with a worthless lad, and I only step
in to keep her from her mother's fate -- my good Jeanne, who was thrown
away to a vagabond."

But when the early spring came,
little Manon had lost her strength and her youthful spirit altogether.
She cared nothing for the stories about Quebec, which were at last paraded
desperately. She sat all day in the doorway, watching the long trains come
across the plain and go away into the dim distance of the north. The clouds
of spring hung low, and when sometimes a clear band of light was left above
the western horizon, she grew hopeful and gazed at it as if some blessed
vision might appear there for her reassurance. It seemed as if the child
of misfortune and sorrow must have disappointment for her inheritance.
The neighbors scolded to each other about old Manon Pochette's vast wealth,
and repeated their conviction over and over that she would soon only have
herself to hoard it for, if she did not take care.

One night there came a summons
to the grandmother that Father Henri, the new priest, desired her to remain
at the church after early mass next morning. Mère Pochette obeyed
somewhat unwillingly; she was shy of this stranger, and angry beside that
indulgent Father Pierre had been superseded. He had carried more than one
of her secrets out of harm's way, that was a comfort; and she did not mean
to take another spiritual adviser so far into her confidence.

She left her granddaughter sleeping,
and sighed a little as she stood by the bedside looking at the sad face
of the young creature who was after all the dearest thing in the world.
Once or twice lately the thought had crossed her mind that the first thing
to be thought of in Quebec was a good doctor. More than one silly girl
had pined away and faded out of this world like the April snow-drifts --
for nothing but love's sake; while if only young Pictou's presence would
cure little Manon, nobody knew where to find him. Perhaps Father Pierre
would remember, but where was he?

Early mass was over, the sun
was well above the horizon, and began to shine warmly into the bare church,
and the tarnished finery of the altar glittered and looked quite splendid.
It might be that the new priest meant to beg for a great sum of money for
the restoration of the church; some one had said he had this much at heart,
and Manon's face was black for a moment with resentment. She was truly
very anxious now about the sick girl at home. As she knelt at her prayers
her thoughts kept wandering homeward instead of to a vague heaven, and
a great throne to which the Bonaventure altar was a plaything. What would
life be worth if little Manon should die? Such an event would make her
own prayers and good works worse than useless, for it was her own short-sightedness
that had brought this grief. There were only a few old people left in the
church, who had nothing else to do and could take their time at their rosaries;
the altar boys had scuffled in the vestry and gone away, leaving their
tumbled and torn ecclesiastical raiment on the floor. Father Henri had
flushed angrily when he caught sight of them, and quickly opened the door
to call the young rascals back, but a moment afterward he gently shut it,
and came out into the church tall and slender, with a grave sweet face,
stopping to kneel before the altar as he passed before it to where old
Manon Pochette seemed to be diligently praying. She was watching him through
a narrow crack of her eyelids, but she bowed her head as he approached
and pressed the small worn crucifix to her breast. The slender cord broke,
the beads separated and fell with a patter like hail upon the floor. "Do
not gather them now," said Father Henri hurriedly, but somehow the old
woman did not dare to look higher than the frayed hem of his long black
gown. It was scant and made of poor material, she observed, and the thought
seemed like a reprieve that she would make him a present of a new one at
Easter. Easter was late that year, and there would still be time. Josephine
would know the proper means to use and the cost of such a benevolence.

She rose to her feet and followed
the good man; they made obeisance together side by side as they crossed
to the vestry door. The old parishioners regarded this with interest, and
wondered what was going to happen, taking counsel of each other in loud
whispers as the door was shut. Mère Pochette's heart was quaking;
she watched the priest while he picked up the small vestments and half
smiled as he heard the owners' merry voices outside. Then he turned and
took a letter from his pocket. "I bring good news to you and yours," he
said courteously; and Manon the elder, who had feared some dire calamity,
-- the loss of her savings or the death of young Pictou for a certainty,
-- found herself growing faint and dizzy. "Sit down, my child," said the
priest. "You are no doubt fasting. Listen, I will read this letter."

Once to hear such news would
have given Manon a fancied foretaste of Heaven; now she heard it without
excitement, almost with disappointment. Her poor grandchild's father had
been one of a respectable family, and now a sum of money equal to the old
Canadian's own fortune had fallen to the poor sick girl at home. The lawyer
had been at some trouble to trace the heir. Father Henri volunteered to
answer the communication, and with some surprise at the manner in which
it had been received he turned away. He had much business on hand that
day, there was a visit to be made to a dying person miles away down one
of the long muddy roads of Bonaventure parish.

But old Manon had fallen upon
her knees; she was weeping sorely and begging for a blessing. She had sinned;
she was avaricious and stony-hearted; the good God was punishing her already
with the pains of hell, and taking her one treasure to himself.

Father Henri listened with dismay.
"I am cursed by this wealth," she groaned, and groveled upon the floor
at his feet. He knew that the young girl was ill, but in that bleak country
one learns to take such dispensations without surprise; the tender creatures
are kindly gathered to the dear saints, and taken up from this blighting
and evil world.

"Listen," said Manon Pochette,
at last regaining her composure and standing before the priest determinedly.
"Listen, you must find for me this Charles Pictou before it is too late.
I cannot let this my child die with hatred in her heart toward me. I am
an old woman; I have had my way long enough, and it brings me only sorrow
and shame. I will send him money. I will treat him as my own son. I will
tell him all, for I burnt the letters that he wrote to Manon long ago.
If he has taken another in her place, the punishment will be mine." Was
this the hard-faced woman who had looked scornfully in even Father Henri's
face? He closed his saintly eyes and said a prayer as he stood before her,
and raised his hands as if to call down mercy upon the stricken gray head.
"I will talk with you this evening," he promised, and they parted silently.

Little Manon had waked and arisen,
and presently she crept feebly to the window to watch for her grandmother.
She wondered what kept her so long away. The big black hats of the neighbors
had reappeared in the short street, and the day was begun as usual. The
men were off to their work, and the children were gathering around the
schoolhouse. The sun was bright and clear, and the girl felt strengthened
and cheered by it. She heard the
cars presently; perhaps Charles might yet come back, though she had
almost ceased to look for such a happiness. She grew hungry, she became
tired with the exertion of crossing the room, she was so weak that the
tears began to flow down her thin cheeks. "My grandmother cares nothing
for me, nothing," she mourned; "she is bargaining with old Philippe, the
gardener; every year she is less generous;" but at that moment Mère
Pochette was kneeling in passionate grief at Father Henri's feet in the
chilly vestry.

At last she approached, and little
Manon was filled with wonder at her look. "You must get well in this good
weather," she said; "we will go soon to Quebec, and you shall have the
one you love best for company. Forgive me at last, my child," but the sick
girl could not comprehend the full meaning of such words, though the speaker
stood there appealing, repentant, the square, sensible business woman who
could be cheated by no one. And now little Manon rose and put her arms
close about the weeping grandmother's neck. Only yesterday faithless Marie
Binet had announced that this neck should in the name of justice be encircled
by a halter.

The train from the States was
just out of sight that very morning -- its long plume of smoke had hardly
drifted away in the clear air before a handsome young man came lightly
up the street. He did not stop at any of the drinking shops near the station,
as most men did, but he hurried toward the older village on the ridge above
-- the straight, uniform row of ancient French houses, and from several
of these eager eyes followed him to the end of the settlement. Then the
various housekeepers rushed out to confer with each other upon the astonishing
event of young Charles Pictou's incomprehensible return. It was like unneighborly
old Mère Pochette to have sent for him without giving anybody the
pleasure of knowing it, but at that moment she was thanking blessed Mary
and Joseph, her patron saints, for this miracle straight from the skies.
It was seldom at any rate that an emigrant returned so soon. Charles had
a prosperous air already, and the whole village was in commotion that morning,
while Father Henri was called to a noble feast the moment he returned from
his errand of consolation.

The young habitants, who still
wore red worsted belts with tassels, looked at their former neighbor's
fine clothes with admiration. He was earning good wages with prospect of
advance, but he had become too miserable at the strange silence. He was
not so very far away, and had taken his first chance to see little Manon
again. He had sent letters to prudent Father Pierre, but that worthy had
kept silence, being at any rate at a great distance from Bonaventure over
seas.

So Manon's strength came back
again in this sunshine of happiness, and the lovers presently were married
and lived their simple lives together. The world was a comfortable place
enough without going to Quebec, but the occasion of Mère Pochette's
grandchild's wedding could be marked by nothing less than such a journey,
and she saw her children lead their procession of calèches, with
immense complacency, living her own youthful joys over again in their behalf,
as one returns in autumn to the meadows where one has gathered the flowers
of spring.

Old Manon bore a vast bundle
when she returned to Bonaventure, and took from it proudly a handsome cassock
for Father Henri. The good man was at his devotions, but she gave it to
Josephine and lingered for a few moments to have a friendly talk. She had
brought Josephine herself a remembrance of less value. "He is a blessed
saint, this father," the stayer at home said. "He speaks no harsh word,
but goes before us like a holy shepherd!" and the housekeeper blessed herself
as devoutly as she could have blessed the priest himself. The ancient holiday
maker could not linger; her shrewd eyes had detected a grievous neglect
of her young cabbages on the part of their guardian, old Philippe. He had
not expected her home so soon, the pig! Presently the round black hat made
its appearance among the weeds, a new and imposing great black bonnet having
been laid aside, and one would find it hard to believe that Mère
Pochette had taken so great a journey.

The neighbors came one by one
without fear or reproach and leaned over the railing of the garden. They
were all very good-natured, for had not one of their own Bonaventure lads
secured the old miser's money after all? The high-roofed white house was
lonely that night; the upper casements were wide open, and the color of
little Manon's deserted red geraniums could be seen in the bright moonlight.
Little Manon herself, rich and happy, had gone away to the States.

NOTES

"Mère Pochette" was originally
published in
Harper's Magazine (76:588-597), in March 1888 and collected
in The King of Folly Island and Other People (1888). This text is
from The King of Folly Island (1888). Where I have noticed probable
errors in a text, I have added a correction and indicated the change with
brackets. If you find errors in this text or if you see items that you
believe should be annotated, please communicate with the site manager. [ Back ]

seigneur: lord; a landed
proprietor. This term designates a particular system of settlement used
by the French in Canada during the colonial period. For a brief description,
see: B. Young and J. A. Dickinson, A Short History of Quebec (Toronto,
1988), pp. 44-47. (Research assistance: Carla Zecher). [ Back
]

The factor:
one who acts as an agent, as in managing a settlement for a landowner. [ Back
]

Beauport, in Lorette ...
the French régime: Beauport is now a northeastern
suburb of Quebec City in Canada, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence
River. According to Britannica Online, "In 1634 Robert Giffard established
there one of the first European settlements in Canada. The name Beauport
probably comes from the bay in the historic province of Brittany in France."
Lorette, also near Quebec City, was a mission settlement for converted
members of the native Huron tribe (see below for more). The French régime
began with colonial settlements in Canada and ended with the French and
Indian War in 1763, when Canada became a British possession. [ Back
]

French buildings on the St. Lawrence River:Two churches, two houses, and a barn.From Wm. Barry, Pen Sketches of Old Houses, 1874.Courtesy of Tufts University Library.

St. Joseph:
Joseph was the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. [ Back
]

the blessed stations of
the cross: "Also called THE WAY OF THE CROSS,
a series of fourteen pictures or carvings portraying events in the Passion
of Christ, from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate to his entombment. The
series of stations is as follows: (1) Jesus is condemned to death, (2)
he is made to bear his cross, (3) he falls the first time, (4) he meets
his mother, (5) Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross, (6) Veronica
wipes Jesus's face, (7) he falls the second time, (8) the women of Jerusalem
weep over Jesus, (9) he falls the third time, (10) he is stripped of his
garments, (11) he is nailed to the cross, (12) he dies on the cross, (13)
he is taken down from the cross, (14) he is placed in the sepulchre. The
images are usually mounted on the inside walls of a church or chapel but
may also be erected in such places as cemeteries, corridors of hospitals,
and religious houses and on mountainsides." (Source:
Britannica Online). [ Back
]

the old Adam in her nature:
In Christian doctrine, Christ is sometimes spoken of as the New Adam, because
he undoes the consequences of Adam's fall in the Garden of Eden (See Genesis
2-3). The old Adam in human nature would be the tendency to sin that is
a consequence of the fall. See Romans 5:11-19 and I Corinthians 15:22. [ Back
]

calèches: 2-wheeled,
horse-drawn vehicles with a driver's seat on the splashboard, used in Quebec.
Note that the spelling has been corrected in this text to the standard
modern spelling. In Jewett's text, the word is spelled, "caléche."> [ Back
]

the forlorn gulf villages:
Villages along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. [ Back ]

sisters of mercy or of charity:
The Sisters of Mercy are a Roman Catholic religious congregation founded
in Dublin in 1831 by Catherine Elizabeth McAuley with the purpose of aiding
young girls, providing food and clothing for the needy, and performing
various works of mercy. Sisters of Charity are "any of numerous Roman Catholic
congregations of noncloistered women who are engaged in a wide variety
of active works, especially teaching and nursing. Many of these congregations
follow a rule of life based on that of St. Vincent de Paul for the Daughters
of Charity .... Several congregations of the Sisters of Charity in the
United States and Canada are branches of the community founded at Emmitsburg,
MD., in 1809 by Mother Elizabeth Bayley Seton, the first native-born American
canonized saint." (Source: Britannica Online). [ Back ]

habitants: This text is
inconsistent about placing this French word in italics. I have left this
punctuation as it is in The King of Folly Island. Though the nuances
of this term are quite complex, in Jewett's day, it would be generally
understood to refer to French Canadians, as opposed to English settlers
or natives. (Research assistance: Carla Zecher). [ Back
]

fêtes: feast day of a
saint in Catholic and Orthodox churches, celebrated in some countries,
such as France, as one's name day, like a birthday. [ Back
]

the shrine of La Bonne Ste.
Anne: St. Anne is the mother of St. Mary. The
basilica at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré remains an important site of
pilgrimage for French-Canadian and other Catholics. [ Back ]

Lorette church, and to the chapel of the Seminary,
where are blessed relics: Old Lorette and New
Lorette, both near old Quebec City, were mission settlements of the often
moved group of converted Huron natives who were attached to and to some
extent protected by the French in Canada. In each settlement, a chapel
was built and dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto, and modeled after the Holy
House of Loretto, which, Francis Parkman says, "as all the world knows,
is the house wherein Saint Joseph dwelt with his virgin spouse, and which
angels bore through the air from the Holy Land to Italy, where it remains
an object of pilgrimage to this day" (536). Parkman reports the story of
the miraculous building of the chapel at Old Lorette, which afterwards
became a popular object of pilgrimage. When the settlement was moved to
New Lorette, another chapel was built. (Source: Francis Parkman, The
Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, Part Second. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1930). It is unclear which of these Mère Pochette
intends to visit. The Seminary in Quebec, founded
by Monsignor de Laval in 1663, is the oldest educational institution in
Canada. It provided elementary education during the French régime.
The priests and teachers who came to the Seminary brought with them objects
of devotion that led to the Seminary housing perhaps the most important
collection of holy relics after St. Peter's in Rome. Among the relics Mère
Pochette may have hoped to see were a small stick from the Garden (or Mount)
of Olives and a piece of stone from the cave of the nativity of the Holy
Virgin in Jerusalem. (Research assistance: Betty Rogers and Carla Zecher). [ Back
]